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Tag: Helsinki

The Herkkujen Suomi (Delicacies of Finland) event was held for the fifth time last weekend at Rautatientori, incorporating the Syystober beer festival. While you might question the wisdom of having another beerfest so soon after SOPP, it strikes me as a very good idea to have these food and beer events together–for two reasons: it can bring smaller local breweries to the attention of people who wouldn’t go to a purely-beer event, and it treats beer properly, placing it at the heart of food culture rather than positioning it as something to fear.

It’s at Syystober that the Finnish beers of the year are announced, the overall winner this year being Plevna‘s Siperia imperial stout (the winner every year in my book). But something else caught my eye as I roamed the tent.

Stadin Panimobaari opened its doors yesterday amid spring showers in Suvilahti, but the rain didn’t deter a sizeable crowd from coming to check it out. I arrived just before the advertised opening time of 16:30 to find the place already full–not difficult, as it’s one of the smaller bars in town, with seating for 42 people–and there was a steady influx of visitors after that, the bar queue stretching out the door for at least the next hour.

The craft scene in Estonia seems to have exploded out of nowhere. It must be only a year ago that I was reading about the homebrew scene there, and the first brew from Põhjala. Since then, over a dozen microbreweries have popped up, and they’re not afraid of experimentation. Estonia (specifically Tartu) played a role in the history of imperial stout, so maybe it’s no surprise to see a variety of stouts being produced (including a very minty mint stout); there’s also pale and red ales, weizens, and so on. Continue reading Estonia: a Baltic Beer Boom

We already heard that a new “American-style” beer bar is set to open next month, at the site of The Stage on Iso Roba. A little more was revealed today about the newcomer, the third new beer-focused bar to open in Helsinki in as many months.

Brewdog Helsinki opened its doors shortly before Christmas, but for various reasons I haven’t managed to visit until now.* Fashionably late, I am here now to answer the question that I asked myself a year ago: is this something new that will shake up the local bar scene, or just more of the same? Continue reading Beware of the Dog?

or, What have the BrewDogs ever done for us?

So the nice people at BrewDog made an announcement today: they’re looking to open a bar in Helsinki to complement their existing establishments, which are mostly in the UK, with one outpost in Stockholm that opened a year or so ago.

Interestingly, most of the comments on their blog post centre around whether Finland is or is not a part of Scandinavia – the post asks “why don’t we expand our presence in Scandinavia?” (incidentally, Finns never seem to mind being included when Scandinavian design is being praised)